Wolf Eyes

Human Animal (Sub Pop)

A vile slaughterhouse hostility emanates from Michigan's Wolf Eyes. The clanks, hisses, scrapes, and flayed vocal disarray of their music is interspersed with pregnant, dreadful silences, and their track titles sound like scraps of icky, loathing poetry. Human Animal's doomed thrills are horror-flick vicarious: Tuning in is like being trapped in a dank, pitch-black dungeon with a snoring cyborg monster capable of unspeakable violence, as your paranoia grows and voices grumble, roar, and careen around inside your skull. Halfway through the album, the apoplectic beast awakens and approaches slowly. The trio  John Olson, Nate Young, and new member Mike Connelly (also of Hair Police), replacing Aaron Dilloway, who helped mix this record  makes improv-based maggot pizzas that are continually, perversely delicious, a credit to both the depth of their chosen aesthetic and the appetites of their fans.